


a boy like you

by lyryk (s_k)



Category: Tipping the Velvet - All Media Types
Genre: Crossdressing, F/F, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:21:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/pseuds/lyryk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Nan wants to be a boy. Flo really doesn't mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a boy like you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shopfront](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/gifts).



> Thanks to J for beta-reading. :-)

Sometimes, Nan wants to be a boy. Flo really doesn't mind.

 _Being_ a boy is different from dressing up as one.

True, Nan does make an extra effort to dress. There’s a whole shelf in her cupboard now that’s full of trousers and cuffs and collars and dress stockings, even a little tray of short wigs and moustaches that she sometimes pastes on. 

Below the hose, right at the bottom of the shelf, is a wooden phallus like the kind she’d worn a lifetime ago. Neither Nan nor Flo is really into penetration, but Flo sometimes likes to rub off against it while Nan holds her up, squeezing her arse and filthily whispering into Flo’s ear, encouraging her to tighten her legs around Nan’s waist while she holds Flo pinned against the wall or on the bed. More than anything else, Nan loves the way the strap feels between her legs, snug against the crack of her arse, the base of the cock rubbing deliciously against her clitoris as Flo—sweet, clever Flo, all prim and proper during the day, as though she were the one who’d been brought up to be a good girl by a family that made its living selling oysters—ruts against her. Nan likes to laugh in her ear and call her a filthy little slut, which just gets them both even more worked up.

No, it’s not fucking Flo that allows Nan to be a boy; Flo fucks her just as often. 

‘Perhaps it’s economics. As Marx would say,’ Flo muses one afternoon. They’re sitting in the tea shop, both in full-skirted dresses (although Nan has loosened the stays of her bodice a little, because really, how do women _wear_ those things?), sipping from steaming cups and watching the snow outside, taking little ladylike bites from the same piece of rich, rum-soaked Christmas cake.

‘How do you mean?’ Nan asks, intrigued, not bothering to chew and swallow before she starts talking.

Flo grins, her hair curling around her face, her eyes sparkling with intelligence, and Nan secretly falls a little more in love. ‘Well, if everything is confined to the material, then your sense of masculinity may be inherently related to your livelihood.’

Nan reaches over, napkin in hand, to dab a bit of chocolate sauce off Flo’s lip. ‘I love it when you talk like you’re giving a speech.’

‘Oh, do be serious.’ But Flo’s smiling, and Nan thinks of enigmatic women in Renaissance paintings. There’s a kind of power in knowing the real woman behind Flo’s public persona, and knowing that she’ll never misuse that power is an almost daily reminder to Nan of how much she’s changed.

She looks at Flo’s elegant hair, thinking of the way it’ll feel beneath her hands as they unravel each other later that night. ‘I was being perfectly serious. There’s nothing more alluring than you sounding like a scholar.’

‘Hush.’ Flo bites her lip, flushing. ‘Someone may hear you.’

‘I said alluring.’ Nan lowers her voice a little. ‘Not sensual. Not erotic. Although you are those things, too.’

‘Do you think your libido might be male?’ Flo grins again, taking a demure sip of tea, her eyes alight with mischief.

Nan groans. ‘I don’t suppose you might want to forget about the lecture and go home so I can ravish you?’

Flo taps her knuckles. ‘We’re going to the lecture. You can still ravish me later.’

‘Is that a promise?’

Flo smiles. ‘Only if you hurry up and finish your tea like a good boy.’

 

\--

 

Later, they walk back home arm in arm. It’s a secret thrill, acting as though were they nothing more than each other’s closest friends. Snow crunches under their feet as they pass by houses with brightly-decorated windows, inhaling the redolence of roasting chestnuts and the clean crispiness of the evening air. 

Nan remembers nights when she paced the streets in her soldier’s uniform, slipping easily into the role of a renter, thinking that that was the furthest outside history she could get, but this is further. This secret between her and Flo is like hiding within a fold of history, a cul-de-sac of their own. (She’d been afraid when they visited home, afraid that her secret would be pinned on her sleeve for everyone to read. No one had, except perhaps Alice, but Nan hadn’t told Alice about her and Flo, not in explicit words. They’d stood and looked at the sea together, Nan and Nan’s sister and Nan’s sweetheart, and Nan had loved the sea again, loved it for its lack of boundaries, for the way the waves constantly fought their constraints.) 

They stop at the bookshop, not going in, just admiring the tinsel and the wreaths that adorn the window. Flo’s gloved fingers squeeze Nan’s arm imperceptibly. ‘You’ve got that look,’ she says. ‘What’re you thinking about?’

‘Hiding in plain sight,’ Nan says, nudging Flo’s ankle with her foot. They walk back with their feet in sync, a game that girls play, reducing them to giggles as skirts and icy cobblestones impede their rhythm.

 

\--

 

After dinner, they drink warm mulled wine and sing carols out of tune, the curtains drawn closed and Nan sitting on the floor with the baby in her lap and her head against Flo’s knees. Above her head, Flo and Ralph begin talking about the next rally. Nan, embracing silliness, translates their ideas into baby talk, whispering against the tiny ear, her trousered legs crossed, comfortable. 

Flo’s fingers tangle idly in Nan’s hair. Outside, a hansom clip-clops past in the street, and there’s singing in the distance. This, Nan thinks, might be the only place on Earth that both Nancy Astley and Nan King have a home. 

Later, after Ralph has retired for the night and the baby is asleep, she’ll undress Flo and herself, strip them both of the veneer of clothing until only they are left, just Flo and Nan. For now, she lifts a sugar plum to her lips and sinks her teeth into it, the sweet flavours bursting on to her taste buds. 

 

-end-


End file.
